New Menlo College coach Mark Speckman, an offensive innovator, is credited with starting the fly offense. He was born without hands but played at Menlo in the 1970s.

New Menlo College coach Mark Speckman, an offensive innovator, is...

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Mark Speckman (right) hugs Tony Borba, a football player he coached at Livingston (Calif.) High School, moments before Speckman is introduced as the head football coach at Menlo College in Atherton, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Mark Speckman (right) hugs Tony Borba, a football player he coached...

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Mark Speckman (right) meets quarterback Erik Peterson before Speckman is introduced as the head football coach at Menlo College in Atherton, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Mark Speckman (right) meets quarterback Erik Peterson before...

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Mike Speckman (left) adjusts his younger brother Mark's necktie after Mark Speckman was introduced as the head football coach at Menlo College in Atherton on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Mark Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Mike Speckman (left) adjusts his younger brother Mark's necktie...

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Mark Speckman walks on the football field after he was introduced as the head coach at Menlo College in Atherton, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Mark Speckman walks on the football field after he was introduced...

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Mark Speckman returns to the football field after he was introduced as the head coach at Menlo College in Atherton on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Mark Speckman returns to the football field after he was introduced...

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Ray Solari, former football coach of the Menlo College Oaks, recalls the years he coached Mark Speckman, who was introduced as the new head football coach at the small business college in Atherton, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Ray Solari, former football coach of the Menlo College Oaks,...

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Mark Speckman is introduced as the new head football coach at Menlo College in Atherton, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. Speckman was a star linebacker for the Oaks in 1973 and 1974 and most recently was head coach at Willamette University in Oregon despite being born without hands.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Mark Speckman is introduced as the new head football coach at Menlo...

Mark Speckman's inaugural team meeting as Menlo College's head football coach mostly went well. Speckman knows how to work a crowd, so he stood before his players and offered a mix of motivation, chatter and self-deprecating humor.

One kid wondered what position Speckman played at Menlo in the 1970s (linebacker). The kid followed up by bluntly asking, "How did you tackle?"

To which Speckman essentially replied, with similar bluntness, "Well, I stayed low, knifed in there and hit the crap out of guys."

Speckman was born without hands. For 56 years now, this has led to questions like the one at last week's meeting - skepticism about his capabilities and assumptions about his limitations. You can't drive, right? Or type? Surely, you can't throw a football? (Wrong, wrong and wrong.)

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He can't tie his shoes, but otherwise Speckman lives by one simple, powerful motto: Figure it out.

He showed up at his introductory news conference wearing a clip-on tie affixed by Velcro. His backpack features leather loops on the zippers, making them easier to open. He quickly retrieved his cell phone from his pants pocket, using his wrist to grip it.

Coaching success

Maybe these mundane details are immaterial to Speckman's coaching success, maybe not. He's considered the leading authority on the fly offense, a bold and unconventional scheme. He rode the system to wild success as a high school coach in California, then to more success in 14 seasons as head coach at Willamette University, a Division III program in Salem, Ore.

And make no mistake: Speckman draws a connection between his "disability" and his 195 career wins.

"You just think differently," he said. "Everyone with hands does things like everyone with hands. People who don't have to figure out a different way. Most creative people look at things differently."

This makes Speckman, in many ways, an ideal fit at Menlo. He played at the Atherton school, yes, so there's a deep personal connection. But this is also NAIA small-college football, far removed from raucous stadiums and bottomless budgets.

"Our resources are limited," Menlo athletic director Keith Spataro said. "The thing that impressed me the most about Mark is, he doesn't walk into situations and think, 'What are the limitations?' He thinks, 'What are the possibilities?' That's how he's lived his life."

A mother's help

Jan Speckman's doctor gave her a spirited pep talk on July 31, 1955.

He had no explanation for why her second child was born with no hands and nine toes. But the doctor walked into her Redwood City hospital room and raved about the baby's otherwise perfect health. There were no problems at all with his brain, his eyesight, his hearing.

Even though Mark's grandparents didn't take the news well - they came into the room crying, angering Jan - she quickly decided it was important to discover what he could accomplish.

"I just never told him he couldn't do anything," said Jan, who now goes by Jan Dorn (she remarried after Mark's father died). "I put the task in front of him and he did it. I tried to be cool, but sometimes I'd sit back and be amazed."

She once gave him a broom and watched him figure out how to sweep the patio at the family's Belmont home. Another time, he fixed the oven light. He didn't avoid cleaning up after the dog.

If his older brother, Mike, played with a bow and arrow, so did Mark. They played touch football in the street, and Mark often dived across the hood of a car trying to make an acrobatic catch. Determination wasn't an issue.

The family made regular treks to Vallejo, where they found the hooks Mark used in lieu of hands. He eventually convinced his parents he didn't need the hooks, so he stopped wearing them as a teenager.

Class president

He was eighth-grade class president, popular in school and mostly comfortable with adapting to situations other kids didn't even consider.

"He didn't know any different," Mike Speckman said. "For him, figuring it out was a natural part of growing up."

At the same time, Mark said, "As a kid, sometimes I got frustrated. It was a catch-22 - I just wanted to fit in and have people not mention it, but the more I fit in the more people wanted to mention it."

He savored sports in part because he was judged solely on his performance. Speckman thrived at Carlmont High, then moved down the Peninsula to play football at Menlo (then a two-year college). Speckman later transferred to Azusa Pacific, where he earned honorable mention NAIA All-America honors.

All along, virtually every season from his sophomore year in high school to his senior year in college, at least one newspaper wrote a story about the football player with no hands. It only got worse when he was penalized for illegal use of hands during one Menlo game. Honest.

Chronicle columnist Herb Caen mentioned this in his 3-dot column on Dec. 3, 1973, and soon the news went national. One supermarket tabloid ran a headline calling him the "Handless Linebacker."

"I was a solid athlete, and I wanted my story to be about being a good football player," Speckman said. "But the story was obviously the hands."

Polished speaker

He now realizes it's a compelling tale, so he tells it with humor and style.

Speckman has built a second career as a motivational speaker, and it takes only one YouTube clip, found through speckmanspeaks.com, to understand why he lands two to five speaking gigs per month. He splices his message about reaching one's potential with hilarious stories about playing catch for the first time, or finding himself in a handicapped hotel room when he didn't request one.

Beneath all this stands an innovative football coach. He first came across the fly offense - a formation in which one wide receiver comes in motion, full speed, just before the snap - as an assistant at North Monterey High in 1979. Speckman expanded the concept, turned it into his base offense and started winning.

He's still winning, which helps explain why coaches from Chip Kelly to Jim Harbaugh call him to ask about the fly. The 49ers ran the fly sweep several times this season, and Kelly's Oregon Ducks scored a touchdown in the Rose Bowl on a 64-yard fly sweep by De'Anthony Thomas.

So why hasn't Speckman, whose career record is 195-107-3, climbed the coaching ladder and reached a big-time program? He was a finalist at Portland State and a couple of other schools, and he once wondered if "maybe there's a ceiling for no-handed coaches."

"It's crossed my mind," Speckman said. "There's obviously a part of everyone that would love to go into a big stadium - and there are a lot of people who would love to do what I'm doing. I'm fortunate to be able to coach college football."